The Curious Middle

• Lindsay Pinchuk was meant to be a marketer and community builder. Listen to hear how Lindsay used her marketing experience to build her own 7-figure company, Bump Club and Beyond, that reached over 3 million users per month. Lindsay has experience working with and creating activations for brands such as Target, Nordstrom, The Honest Company, ULTA, Huggies, Unilever, and hundreds more.

Today, Lindsay uses her 25 years of experience in creating and growing brands to help others. As the CEO of Lindsay Pinchuk Marketing + Consulting, Lindsay's company offers consulting, coaching, and speaking services to businesses of all sizes and stages. Lindsay also started Dear FoundHer, a top 2% podcast that helps female entrepreneurs build, scale, and sell their businesses.

In our conversation we discuss some of Lindsay's signature marketing strategies, her startup story and why Lindsay is so committed to helping other businesses and entrepreneurs. What I love most about Lindsay is her authenticity. When you speak with Lindsay what you see and hear is what you get, and what are you are getting is decades of marketing experience and and a force energy for getting things fearlessly,

https://www.lindsaypinchuk.com/

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on Instagram @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you.

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Topics Discussed:

• Lindsay's approach to community building through events and speakers
• The importance of personal connection and building relationships with the community
• The significance of hosting events for marketing purposes
• Engaging the community through knowledge sharing and small group interactions
• Addressing Anti-Semitism
• Lindsay uses an email management system called Flow Desk for targeted communication.
• Lindsay cautions against relying too much on AI-generated content and encourages personalization.

Meet Lauren McGoodwin, the founder of Career Contessa. Lauren generously shares the story of how she started her business, her motivation and how she built Career Contessa from an idea to the leading career site for millennials offering career tips, career advice, job listings and career coaching.

Lauren shares her story of how she struggled to find her place after graduating from college, and how a role in recruiting gave her the idea for Career Contessa. From day one, Lauren has been driven to help people find the opportunities she could not find and to have the career advice so many of us are missing. For those of us who lack connections or career mentorship, Career Contessa wants to be your trusted advisor.

In our conversation we discuss topics ranging from Lauren's book Power Moves, to common career mistakes, "watering your own grass", entitlement, and how a false narrative of the perfect job can hurt your future. This is the advice we wish we had when we started our careers.

https://www.careercontessa.com/

Power Moves by Lauren McGoodwin

The Career Contessa Podcast

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on Instagram @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you.

Sign up for our monthly newsletter with a curated list of our recommendations on what to read, watch, listen to and more.

Topics Discussed:

• Lauren shares the story of how she started Career Contessa and its purpose as a leading career site for millennials, offering career advice, job listings, career coaching, and job resources.
• Lauren discusses her struggle to find a job after college and how her experience in recruiting gave her the idea for Career Contessa. She emphasizes her drive to help others find opportunities that she had difficulty finding herself.
• Lauren explains her motivation for writing the book, "Power Moves," which aims to help people build fulfilling careers. She describes it as a comprehensive guide to building a healthy, successful, and fulfilling career on one's own terms.
• Lauren discusses the importance of reframing our perception of our careers and provides examples from her book on how to do so.
• Lauren explores the concept of the ambition trap and the feeling of entitlement that can hinder progress and success in careers. She highlights the challenges millennials face in managing their expectations and adjusting their narratives.
• Lauren shares the timeline of how Career Contessa grew, from its start as a school project to offering career coaching, creating online courses, and expanding through various media platforms.
• Lauren discusses the challenges she faced in transitioning from a predictable work environment to running a startup. She also offers advice on staying organized, establishing processes, and maintaining consistency.
• Lauren envisions the future of Career Contessa, aiming to provide the best resources and adapt to changing trends and preferences, such as creating content in different formats to reach a wider audience.
• Lauren provides advice for individuals building their own businesses, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing an email list, marketing strategies, and consistency.

As a lifelong book lover, author and book publisher, Andy Hunter knew he wanted to keep independent bookstores alive and thriving. Using his experience in the publishing industry, Andy had the audacity to come up with a successful idea for taking on Amazon. Andy's idea was Bookshop.org, an online platform that gives independent bookstores an easy to use, full service platform for selling books online. Bookshop handles the distribution marketing, and shipping of online book sales, and doesn't take a cut so bookstores keep all the profits. Since the majority of book stores cannot afford an online storefront, they can partner with Bookshop for online sales to add profits to their stores.

Since independent bookstores already have small margins, being able to sell online can be the difference between staying open or shutting down. Independent bookstores add so much value to communities. Research shows bookstores attract more business to other commerce and the property values rise since bookstore are a community gathering spots that bring people together. In our conversation, Andy shares how the challenges and adversities of his childhood fostered his love for books, and how his career in publishing led him to the path he was meant to pursue. We hope you will be inspired to shop from Bookshop and to encourage your local bookstore to sign up for Bookshop.org. We wish for every community to have their own beloved local bookstore!

https://bookshop.org/

We want you to know @lisanormanbooks General Surgical Pathologist, mother of four and children's book author. of the “Ellie Asks” series. Dr. Norman's books stress the importance of basic human virtues such as HOPE, LOVE, RESPECT, and JOY. Dr. Norman believes in giving back and paying it forward, instilling basic human virtues in children and maintaining Christian values in today's world. 
If you are interested in a career in medicine, check out the path for Surgical Pathologists. Dr. Norman's career has given her the opportunity to help others, continuously learn and work a part time schedule so she can be a present mom for her kids. Seems like a beautifiul life path to us! Follow @lisanormanbooks 💕.  

Benjamin Percy is an author, screenwriter,  and Marvel Comics writer for Wolverine and X-Force. Ben joins us to share his path to becoming a writer. We discuss how Ben's upbringing and work ethic led him to his dream job of spending the day with his imaginary friends. If you are curious about what it takes to be become a writer including the tradeoffs and work required to make it happen, you will love this conversation.  Ben is currently working with Paramount Plus, where they are adapting Urban Cowboy into a series,  Ben  co-wrote the feature film, Summering, with director James Ponsoldt,  has taught extensively, including at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, Aspen Summer Words, and the Paris Writing Workshop. Ben's class is on Skillshare at this link:  http://skl.sh/benpercy

 

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on Instagram @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you.
• Go to our website www.meantforit.com for past episodes.

Can you imagine a world where you never have to take notes again because you had a personal assistant who transcribed and summarized each meeting with notes including who was speaking and the follow up action items? This assistant would also let you easily search, review and find clips of the meeting conversation?  This assistant is named Fred from Fireflies.ai When you add Fireflies to a recorded meeting it will be your best friend and let you focus on the meeting vs capturing what was said. In our conversation, we speak with Krish Ramineni, Fireflies co-founder about how Fireflies can help you improve your productivity in any area of your life. Krish shares his background,  early influences, and why getting yourself a Fireflies free trial today will change the way you have any future meeting.

Check out https://fireflies.ai/

Connect with Krish, follow Krish on Instragram

Gartner's Top 25 Enterprise Software Startups Krish was featured on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine: 12 Founders Changing Business 2020 

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on Instagram @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you.
• Go to our website www.meantforit.com for past episodes.

 

Topics Discussed:

• Overview of Fireflies (03:02-06:47)
• Fireflies as an AI notetaker that works with major video conferencing platforms (03:16-03:24)
• Vision of perfect recall and capturing all meeting information (03:34-03:49)
• Transcription, summarization, and analysis of calls (03:56-04:02)
• Krish's favorite features: high accuracy transcription, customizable notes, and Ask Fred functionality (04:16-05:38)
• Potential future of notetaking and its impact on handwritten notes (06:42-07:00)
• Description of the free trial and business tier features (10:59-11:12)
• Krish's Background and Inspiration (15:12-21:58)
• Education system influences and interest in improving communication (16:06-20:49)
• Potential impact of AI on mundane tasks and the importance of critical reasoning and communication skills (21:57-23:46)
• Accessibility and the potential for education outside of traditional classrooms (30:39-31:58)
• Advice to validate ideas quickly and pursue passions (34:51-35:26)

Valerie June is a force of beauty and a rising music star. In our conversation, Valerie shares when she started to sing and walks us through her song writing process. Valerie explains how songs mysteriously come to her through humming and chanting while she is living her life , washing dishes or simply walking in nature. We discuss Valerie's new book, Light Beams: A Workbook for Being Your Badass Self, dedicated to helping people connect to themselves and the earth through various exercises. Listen to hear how Valerie's creative soul experiences tree bathing and connecting to water. Twenty years ago, when Valerie was cleaning houses, she had a vision of herself as a musician that included how she would spend each day. Today, that vision is her reality. After listening to this conversation, you may be inspired to give yourself permission to follow the ideas that come to you in your sacred moments.

Reviews for Valerie:

"This stunning song cycle of redemption and reclamation adds an orchestral-pop sheen to June's gorgeous blend of astral folk and meditative R&B." - Rolling Stone

"Most intriguing, fully formed new talents." -New York Times

https://www.valeriejune.com/

Topics Discussed:

• Tree bathing
• The ancient wisdom of trees
• How the water connect us
• The earth is crying
• The exercises in Valerie's book to help you to connect and reflect
• What would it look like if we designed AI from a place of positivity and beauty
• Beauty is a political force
• Talking to the other side
• Valerie's new book Light Beams
• Valerie's upbringing

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on IG @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would really, really love to hear from you.
• Go to our website www.meantforit.com for past episodes.
• If you leave us a review on itunes, can we feature you? Let us know at [email protected]

Honestly, do you wish you could write copy for a website or email that people actually wanted to read? Imagine a future where you triple your earnings by learning how to write non sucky copy. In this future you, Laura Belgray is someone you want to know.

Laura's new book, Tough Titties, is a hilarious memoir where Laura shares her story, from her awkward teenage years to every major milestone in her life. Luckily for the reader, Laura believes in TMI. We guarantee you will laugh out loud and maybe feel better about the embarrassing moments in your life. In our conversation, Laura shares how she teaches people to write better through her online courses. Yes, it is possible to learn the skill of writing! And, if you think you have nothing to write about, Laura has a course for that also. Laura says, "your everyday, boring, mundane life is full of stories."

Meet Laura, go to her site for freebies, sign up for her email and join the after hours party.

If you enjoy this podcast, please share it with a friend and follow us on IG @meantforit

• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would seriously love to hear from you!
• Go to our website www.meantforit.com for past episodes.
• If you leave us a review on itunes, can we feature you?

 

How does Michell Kawaja dance with the light in others? Through Michell’s JoyLab Journey, participants experience a quiet clubbing dance class that is not only FUN, it also helps release psychosomatic gunk. People are “lighter” by the end of class.  Michell danced ballet professionally and was a Nia Technique teacher for 17 years. Michell’s goal is to guide bodies to mental well-being through joyful movement.  Michell was blessed with an abundance of joy and her goal is to share her joy and passion for playful movement with others. We think you will love this authentic conversation about dancing and releasing positive energy. 

Michell Kawaja 

Follow Michell on IG

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• Reach out to us anytime: [email protected] to say hello or recommend somone for a future episode. We would seriously love to hear from you!
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This is a reposted episode with Alisha Gaddis because there is so much good advice and Alisha is just a delightful human. 

Alisha is an EMMY Winning Actress, 6x EMMY Nominated Actress & Producer, 2x Latin GRAMMY Award Winning Performer & Producer, Best-Selling Author, and endless source of creativiity.  

Alisha has a  lust for living life to its fullest. Next month, we will catch up with Alisha in a new episode.